Several methods have been proposed in the literature to select an access point (AP) in single-hop wireless networks. The conventional approach for AP selection is based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI), in which an end device associates with/connects to an AP having the strongest received signal strength. This policy, however, ignores other factors that are important to end devices (such as AP load). Such factors could lead to very bad performance. In one prior art, the number of associated/connected end devices is used as a metric to select an AP. However, this metric does not consider the access link quality between the end devices and AP. In another prior art method, an AP selection metric based on the total number of users/end devices associated with/connected to the AP and the average packet error rate of a user/end device is used to select an AP. However, the model used in this metric does not capture the bandwidth contention among the end devices and different link data rates of the end devices. In yet another prior art method, a centralized method for determining an end device/user-AP association/connection is used to ensure a network-wide max-min fair bandwidth allocation to users/end devices. However, this method requires a central controller that knows the bandwidth of each end device.
All of the above approaches were designed for single-hop wireless networks; where end devices are only one hop away from the wired backbone and the wireless access link is assumed to be the bottleneck. All the above methods do not jointly consider the impact of the access link quality and the quality change of the path inside the network to the communication performance of the end device's.
In a multi-hop wireless network, the communication performance of end devices (e.g., fairness, throughput) is not only affected by the access link but also by the connection between the AP/relay node (RN) and the gateway (GW)/base station (BS). Therefore, when the problem of AP/RN selection in multi-hop wireless networks is considered, the schemes for single-hop wireless network cannot be used. A new AP selection method that considers both the access link and the path quality inside the network needs to be developed.
A solution to the problem of how to select an AP/RN in multi-hop wireless networks by considering both the path metric inside the network and the access link quality from the end device to the AP would be advantageous.